A concert probing various cosmic and spiritual dimensions in the unique space of Temppeliaukio church – the music travels from the Eternal Light of Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna to the darkness of outer space explored in the Finnish premiere of Gérard Grisey’s masterpiece Le Noir de L’Étoile.
Ligeti’s choral Lux Aeterna drawing on the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass became a classic in the 1960s when Stanley Kubrick used it in the soundtrack for his film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Similarly based on a Christian Mass is the string quartet Tenebre, originally commissioned by Kronos Quartet, by Bryce Dessner of The National rock band fame. The piece describes the journey from darkness to light. The work culminates in a section using the voice of Sufjan Stevens, multi-tracked into a renaissance-like choir.
The evening ends with Le Noir de l’Étoile, a major work by Gérard Grisey, one of the main representatives of “spectral music”. Scored for percussion sextet, tape and pulsar, it is based on the rhythmic pulses transmitted by a neutron star, and performed in the round, it brings this concert embodying modern spiritualism to a ritualistic conclusion.